Ketchum’s Off Season Gets a Director

Red offers up early detailsEric Red spilled the beans on his next project at Screamfest in Hollywood last night. Following a screening of his latest directorial effort (his first since Bad Moon) 100 Feet, Red told the audience during a Q&A session that he’d be directing an adaptation of Jack Ketchum’s novel Off Season.

I caught up to Red in the theater lobby to press him for more details.

“Dallas [Jack Ketchum] and I have known each other for years and we’ve been talking about making this one,” he said. “It’s time, it’s the perfect time to do it.”

Off Season – published in ’81 and released in the ’90s unexpurgated – tells of city folk on holiday in Maine who are terrorized by a family of cannibals. Ketchum drew his inspiration for the story from Sawney Bean legend and horror/siege flicks such as The Hills Have Eyes and Assault on Precinct 13.

Red isn’t concerned that ideas from Off Season, itself, have been cherry picked for a wave of modern survival horror films in the same vein. “I think it’s the classical nature of the story that makes [Off Season] work. A great horror movie is a group of people trapped in an isolated setting against a monster. The difference with this is that it’s going to be 100% convincing and hardcore and extreme. You couldn’t have made the film ten years ago, but now I think you can take this as far as you can go. But we’re going to stay very true to the book: Low-key, small, very shocking.”

Nick Koff is on board to produce.

Ketchum’s published follow-up to Off Season, Offspring, went before cameras this summer under the direction of Andrew Van Den Houten. Red’s writing credits include Near Dark and The Hitcher.